Editorial: Break?

IT’S A rare business that can largely choose when it will be open and when it will be closed.

Meet the two-week spring break. It’s an experiment coming next month to test how students, teachers and parents respond to a doubling of the traditional spring holiday.

Teachers are already in favour. No surprise there. What employee wouldn’t like this?

As for parents, the school district says it is responding, in part, to calls by those who want more time to get to where they want to go because of northern travel distances.

Fair enough. It’s safe to say that speaks to a socio-economic class where money and occupation allows families the luxury of such choice.

But it’s also safe to say there are more families who don’t have the socio-economic privilege of choice.

Daily matters such as arranging additional child care with attendant expenses and juggling work requirements will make a two-week school break all that more complicated.

And that raises the question of whether a longer spring break is a matter of convenience or necessity.

The school district wants to determine this by asking parents for their opinion. But the problem is that because of bureaucratic complexities the school district is asking for that opinion by the end of February as it ponders next year’s school schedule even before this experimental longer break takes place. And that’s putting the cart before the horse.

Get local stories you won't find anywhere else right to your inbox.Sign up here